40 years jail for South Korean chatroom sex abuse group leader
- A South Korean court has sentenced the mastermind of one of the country’s biggest online sex abuse rings to 40 years in jail
- Cho Ju-bin was found guilty of running a group that blackmailed girls into sharing sexual videos that were then posted in pay-to-view chatrooms
- At least 10,000 people used the chatrooms, with some paying up to $1,200 (£1,000) for access
- Some 74 people, including 16 underage girls, were exploited
- “The accused has widely distributed sexually abusive content that he created by luring and threatening many victims,” the Seoul Central District Court said on Thursday
- Cho’s criminal syndicate sold the videos it acquired through blackmail to secretive chatrooms on the Telegram app
TikTok announce new feature to prevent seizures in epileptic users
- TikTok has announced a new feature that will allow people with photosensitive epilepsy to skip videos that could trigger seizures
- It comes a few months after it began labelling videos featuring effects such as flashing lights
- The Skip All option, to be rolled out in the next few weeks, will allow users to set their profile to not show these videos
- An epilepsy charity said it hoped other social-media sites would follow suit
- Users who come across a photosensitive video will receive a notification inviting them to skip all similar videos in future
- TikTok said it wanted to make the platform “accessible for everyone”.
- “Given the visual nature of our platform, we’re beginning this work with a series of photosensitivity features,” it added
Government water down plans to bring gigabyte broadband to everyone in UK by 2025
- Ambitious plans to roll out gigabit-speed broadband to every home in Britain by 2025 have been rolled back in Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s spending review
- Now the aim is to have a “minimum of 85% coverage” by that date
- It will come as no surprise to industry watchers, who felt the target was unachievable
- The budget for the plan remains the same – £5bn, although the figure for next year’s spend is much lower, with only £1.2bn of that £5bn will be made available up until 2024
- The National Infrastructure Strategy document said it will “seek to accelerate roll-out further to get as close to 100% as possible”
Disappointment at lack of funding for Covid catch up
- A think tank has warned that no new funding will be available next year to provide catch-up support for pupils whose education has been disrupted as a result of Covid-19The Education Policy Institute (EPI) said “it is disappointing” that today’s government spending review does not outline any additional funding and says the adverse effects of Covid-19 on pupils’ education “are likely to continue long after next year”
- Documents published by the Treasury on Wednesday show that £1.4 billion is available to schools this year for pupils’ catch-up and free school meals, but only £400 million is available next year
- Natalie Perera, Executive Director of the EPI, said: “It is disappointing that no additional funding is available to continue to provide catch-up support for pupils who have had their education disrupted as a result of the pandemic”
